Month: January 2014

A friendly Super Bowl bet between the mayors of Seattle and Denver is causing a stir in New Mexico.
If the Seahawks win Sunday, Denver Mayor Michael Hancock has wagered a few things he says are indicative of his city. Among them: handmade skis, a hoodie and a sampling of Denver’s “amazing green chile.”

Chile from the Mile High City?

The question has fired up New Mexicans, resulting in a flurry of social media posts on New Mexico’s long history with the hot peppers.

Chile is the state vegetable and the basis of the official state question—”Red or green?” A state law even has been passed to protect the spicy reputation of New Mexico peppers by targeting impostors everywhere from roadside stands to grocery stores.

Sometimes I come across chile that has a good taste besides heat, most of the time its just heat and ruins the dish. So I am not a fan.

Albert (Seth MacFarlane) is a sheep farmer who lacks courage, loses his beloved girlfriend (Amanda Seyfried) as a result of his withdrawal from a duel. He soon meets another lady (Charlize Theron), and discovers his bravery and confidence. The herder soon realizes his true potential when the lady’s spouse (Liam Neeson), an infamous criminal, demands payback.

Intel Corp plans to reduce its global workforce of 107,000 by about 5 percent this year as the chipmaker, struggling with falling personal-computer sales, shifts focus to faster-growing areas, a company spokesman said on Friday.

The announcement, equivalent to over 5,000 positions, comes a day after Intel posted a fourth-quarter earnings report that did little to dispel concerns about a slowing PC industry.

“This is part of aligning our human resources to meet business needs,” spokesman Chris Kraeuter told Reuters on Friday.

The job reductions may include early retirement, attrition and other options, Kraeuter added. He declined to say whether details of the changes had been announced internally.

I predict more layoffs and not just in New Mexico and it sounds like they will be in the first quarter of 2014.

In its report on Thursday, Intel forecast March-quarter restructuring charges of $200 million, a portion of which could be earmarked for severance pay.

On 11/12/13 I reported to a conference room on the 3rd floor of the RR5 building at the Intel Rio Rancho, New Mexico site. All technicians were to report at their designated time to find out their employment status. My manager stated he had to read from the script and the only part I remember from that script was that “my skills were found to be less than my peers”, or something to that effect. I was notified by my manager that I was “redeployed”, Intel’s term for people that are being laid off. I was told that I would still be employed until 1/15/2014 but that I did not need to come in unless I wanted to.

Intel had announced a few months before that this layoff was going to happen. While I had been mentally preparing myself for it and thinking about what would happen if I did get laid off I wasn’t really expecting to be let go. I had talked to my manger the day before and he didn’t indicate that he was expecting me to be let go. Of course he wouldn’t have any way to know for sure. He wasn’t involved in the decision making process other than to fill out a “skills matrix” of some kind on me. I don’t have any reason to believe that he wrote something like “this guy has no skillz!”. In fact my performance review for the previous year was quite good and my manager was discussing a promotion for me in the next year or two. He was also encouraging me to go to school to finish my degree. Things seemed pretty positive from my point of view.

If I was missing some sort of skills or I was supposed to know something, at least as far as my manger and I was concerned, I think I would have known. This layoff wasn’t supposed to have anything to do with performance anyway. It was supposed to be all skills based. It’s mystery to my exactly what caused me to be on HR’s shit list, but I’m not believing that this layoff was completely skills based.

Intel did a number of things to make this process go easy on the employees. I effectively got a 2 month paid vacation, they waited until the beginning of the year before I was terminated allowing me to get bonuses and other benefits and I get a severance. They could have given no notice and just terminated my employment immediately.

I have moved on and accepted what has happen. It wasn’t easy especially with 18 years at Intel, it hurt. Feelings of rejection and “why me” had a much bigger impact on me than I expected and its hard not to hold a little resentment over how it all went down. But I was better prepared for this layoff financially than the last one in 2006. I am already taking classes to start a career in another industry. Hopefully New Mexico provides jobs in that industry or I may be moving out of state.

The chip giant received $3.3 million in state tax credits from Arizona for creating about 1,000 new permanent jobs with Fab 42, the Arizona Republic noted in a report breaking the news that the facility has been put on permanent hiatus.
Intel has in fact kept its end of that deal, adding more than 1,000 new workers to its payroll in the state—they just work at other Intel manufacturing facilities in the area, according to Mulloy.
Intel is painting its decision not to open Fab 42 as a simple matter of finding a more efficient means of getting to 14nm production at existing facilities. But it’s hard not to see the impact of a slumping PC market on this development—Gartner recently characterized the double-digit drop in PC shipments in 2013 as the “worst decline in PC market history.”